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Postscript to a Legacy

The NY Times ran an obituary today about a man who was responsible for single handedly and right at the bottom of the article was a tiny little detail that I could identify with:

Perhaps the greatest boost Mr. Katayama gave the 240Z was its very name, which Nissan had intended only as a working model number. In the late 1960s, when the car was first introduced in Japan, a Nissan executive, enamored of a certain Lerner and Loewe musical, named it the Fairlady Z.

When the first shipment of Fairlady Zs arrived in the United States, Mr. Katayama, judging the sobriquet horrifyingly effete for the American market, stripped the nameplate off each car with his own hands.